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He walked into the Shakti Temple. There was a priestess in there pouring tea. She looked up at him expectantly as he entered.

He sat down and took the tea cup she passed to him "What brings your here, dear soul?" she asks.

With a deep sigh he said "I need some time with a tantric priestess. My wife and I...it is finished...we love each other but the spark has died...you know how it is..."

"Dear one," she replied, "I can of course bring you a priestess trained in the arts who could massage you into bliss. But let me tell you, at heart your wife is no different from a priestess."

He laughed and spluttered some tea. "Do you know how many years it has been since we had any passion?" rolling his eyes.

"Do you want to know why?" she said, topping up his tea cup with the thick dark liquid.

"Do I want to know why?" he asked, almost surprised. This was a situation he just kind of accepted. After all, most of his friends wives were the same. He never stopped to think if there was a reason. Wives were wives. Priestesses were priestesses...

"Shakti" she said, "It's about her shakti"

"Her what?"

"It is the life force essence that runs through a person or in fact any"thing alive, but most especially through a woman's body." The priestess explained.

“When you met your wife it was her shakti that drew you close...do you remember your first attraction?"

"Hmmm" his eyes rolled back as if looking a long way back in his inner records. "Yes she was dancing, and her hips swayed so smoothly. She was wearing this beautiful dress with red roses on it and her hair was cascading down her back."

"Exactly...her shakti. It was her energy your saw in her hips and her hair and her radiant beauty. It was even her energy that made her choose that dress as the expression of her essence that night"

"So what happened to it?” he asked, trying the recall the last time he had seen her make an effort to wear anything remotely pretty.

"You decided to possess her shakti," the priestess said looking his straight in the eye, "and when shakti is possessed She starts to die."

"What?! You mean marry her?"

"Marriage is not the problem. It's the attitude that society teaches one to have in marriage that is the problem. You were taught that she is yours,and from that moment on her shakti slowly began to die."

"Are you trying to say that my wife's lack of radiance and sexuality is all my fault?" he asked getting a bit heated.

"Not yours exactly, but society's. No one taught you how to nourish the shakti of your wife. Instead they taught you ownership. You were attracted to a beautiful wild bird and put in into a cage and then wondered why all the feathers started to wilt and fall out. Eventually you have a sad bird with no song left and no shine. You came here today hoping for time with a free bird..."

"So how can one keep their wife beautiful? Are you saying I should just let her run around free as if she is not married? She might as well have stayed single..." he was trying to work out what the priestess was suggesting.

"There are two alternatives to caging the bird. One of course is leaving her free in the wild, but the other option you have not considered is to discover what conditions YOU can create to make her shine even more. Plus you can keep her even safer than she would be in nature. Basically, if you can do a better job than even God has offered, then there is every reason she would rather be in your care than out in the wild!"

It made sense.

"Shakti doesn't want to be possessed, wasn't made to be possessed. That kills her. Look at what happens when man thinks he owns the land...he ruins it! Shakti wants to be seen, felt into, honoured, worshipped and protected. Not owned.

“This is how the shamans used to view mother nature, not as a possession, but as something sacred they had the honour to protect.They trained their sensitivity to LISTEN to her...every gust of wind,the changing colors of leaves. They could smell the rain in the air before the storm and feel an earthquake days before it came.

“THIS is how to love your wife. Every day you need to scan her like a new landscape. Feel each nuance, every subtle shift in mood. Notice in her smell, the flexibility of her joints, the rate of her breath. And then notice your effect upon her. When you lightly caress her skin, how does her breathing change? her heartbeat? the dilation in her eyes? When you touch her bod, touch her energy, her essence, her soul...

“There are subtle currents of lifeforce moving through her each moment, especially in response to you. If you feel them, they will intensify. If you ignore them, they will fade. For consciousness is the very raison d'etre of heir existence. This is the dance of shiva and shakti –consciousness and energy.

“If you attend to those currents, worship them with your heart, stay in a state of awe and wonder at the breath that moves in her, then she will transform everything in your lives into orgasm and thus into a higher state of being. She is the vehicle, and you can create that alchemy together.

“Worship her breath, dear soul. Worship every breath like the miracle of life that it is.

“It's not about what you do to her. No technique. She doesn't want to be done. She wants to be felt.

“Only you ego needs to know what to do. Your true nature is Being. Your true nature is pure consciousness. When you rest in That, then there is so much space for Shakti to shine, to dance, to live.

“If you are not present with your own life, your own feelings, your own breath...then there is no way on heaven and earth that you can be present with hers. When you run around in a cloud of stress, there is no space at all. No presence. No Shakti. She will contract.

“Listen: If the space you offer her is tiny, she will contract. If you expand your consciousness, she will expand. Do you understand?

“A wife that gives herself to an unpresent man is destined to wilt and shrivel up, unless she sets herself free.”

This is a lot, so she pauses to add more hot water to the tea pot from the kettle beside her. He watches as she swirls the tea in the pot, almost as if she plays music with it. She doesn't look like she is just making tea, but performing some sort of ceremony. Finally she raises the pot high in the air and they watch a stream of tea cascade into the pouring pot. Then she tips it into each of the tiny cups. He is almost in a trance just watching.

"Make every day of life sacred." she says, as if reading his thoughts, "Most especially observing each breath of your wife as if you witness a holy miracle. And indeed, you do."